Program organizers at the new East Athens Educational Dance Center might feel the urge to click their heels in much the same way at 10 a.m. Saturday.

That is when ribbons - usually counted on there to tie ballet slippers to dainty ankles - will lace dancers' hopes to a new building during its official opening at 390 McKinley Drive. Teachers, students, parents, community members and leaders from Athens-Clarke County and its Leisure Services department will cut those ceremonial ribbons to celebrate the many steps - and steppers - leading to the dancers' new home away from home.

"We've been waiting for it for a long, long time," said Tenisha Cole, a former student and teacher at the center.

She remembers her own introduction to dancing 12 years ago. Then 9, Cole joined dozens of girls in ballet, jazz and modern dance lessons at the center's former one-room Dudley Park building. Despite the snug surroundings, a love for movement formed during those after-school sessions.

Young, mostly-female students learn discipline as well as how to behave properly from Lois Thomas-Ewings, the facility supervisor, who enforces rigid conduct rules. While she declined to be interviewed for this story, Thomas-Ewings did hand over the center's mission statement that stresses diversity, values and leadership through performing arts education.

"It's not a program that you can just show up and do whatever you want," said Granados, who has taught children and adults at the center for several years. "There are rules. That's what dance should be. It's an art form."

Her tap students, Ann Dunn and Lillian Kincey, are part of a core group of adults who dance there for recreation, a programming segment that will likely grow with the increased space at the center.

Classmates for about five years, the women are grateful for the "sprung" wooden floors that are easier on their knees with the slight give. A stereo system wired throughout the building also is welcomed over the portable radios that used to blare music from one corner of the room at Dudley.

"Sometimes you couldn't even hear yourself tap," Kincey said. "This is the Taj Mahal by comparison."

Their class takes place in one of two large studios at the center, which cost roughly $2.7 million SPLOST dollars and took just more than a year to build.

The focal point of the structure is the 5,000-square-foot performance hall, encircled above by a catwalk for lighting.

The wide-open area is where young dancers will shine Saturday, taking their first bows after a special performance for an audience of grip-and-grin officials. Parents, whose proud support keeps the girls on their toes, also are expected to deliver some warm applause.

"It's like they (girls) want to dance more now that they are in this nice facility," Cole said.

She watched her students' wide-eyed entrance into the new studios when classes were first moved to the center in September.

Each day, those young dancers grow more comfortable at the dancing bars, which hug vast mirrors placed around the room.

Some of the children use their own reflections to see what they are doing.

And Cole looks out for the girls who try not to peek at all.

She remembers how it felt to be a shy dancer.

But Saturday, she'll tell them, is a day for those at the center to stand proud.

"They want to show that they deserved it. Because they did," Cole said. "They worked real hard to get it. We all did."